Chapter 17
Seventeen
She didn’t have Nate’s manuscript.
That was the thought circling Livvie’s mind as she pushed through the revolving doors of Pemberton & Associates, past the security desk with its bored guard, toward the elevator bank that would carry her to whatever judgment waited upstairs.
She’d left Maple Lake to save her job, but she’d come back empty-handed.
No pages. No ending. No proof that her two weeks in Minnesota had accomplished anything except shattering her heart into pieces she wasn’t sure she’d ever find again.
She should probably start packing her desk.
But she’d dressed for battle anyway.
Sharpest blazer—the charcoal one she saved for client meetings and days when she needed to feel like someone who mattered.
Heels that meant business, even though they pinched her toes and made her calves ache.
Hair blown out, makeup precise, armor assembled with the care of a soldier preparing for a war she’d already lost.
Livvie Fox walked into the elevator looking like a woman who had everything under control.
The lie held until the doors opened on the fourteenth floor.
Something was wrong.
She felt it immediately—a charge in the air, a hush. The entire staff had assembled, some of them in work attire, others in Sunday-morning casual, all of them holding coffee cups and looking at her, their expressions complicated in ways she couldn’t read.
Pity? Guilt? Something else?
Her stomach tightened.
When she reached the conference room—the glass-walled fishbowl where the all-hands meeting should have been assembling—she found half her colleagues hunched over laptops and printed pages, reading with expressions that made her heart stutter.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
Priya looked up first. Her dark eyes held sympathy and something else—dread, maybe. Or warning.
“Livvie.” She stood, moving toward her. “I tried to call you. I—”
“What’s happening?”
Derek Huang glanced up from his tablet. His expression was harder to read—was that satisfaction? Discomfort? Both?
“Ian Rivers turned in his manuscript,” he said. “This morning. The whole thing. Delivered directly to Richard’s inbox.”
The floor shifted under Livvie’s feet.
He’d finished it.
Nate had actually finished it.
She should feel happy—triumphant, even. He’d done the impossible. He’d broken through his block, faced his grief, finished the story his sister had started. Everything she’d hoped for him, everything she’d been working toward—
But he hadn’t told her.
Hadn’t called. Hadn’t texted. Hadn’t even sent a single word since she’d left the notebook on the porch yesterday with her heart folded inside.
She’d found out from Derek Huang. Of course. Because she didn’t matter.
“That’s—” She swallowed. Tried to find words that weren’t pathetic. “That’s great news. That’s wonderful.”
“Is it?” someone muttered from the back of the room.
Livvie turned. A junior editor she barely knew—Marcus? Martin?—was scrolling through his tablet with a frown.
“What does that mean?”
Priya stepped closer, lowering her voice. “Liv. The ending is…there’s something wrong with it.”
“Wrong how?”
“It’s…” Priya hesitated. Glanced at the others, then back at Livvie. “It’s not good. The whole manuscript is brilliant—honestly, maybe his best work—but the last scene is a disaster. It’s like he gave up. Or just phoned it in, like he didn’t know what to write, so he just…threw something together.”
Livvie’s mind raced. The ending. Something wrong with the ending. What had he written? What had he done?
“I need to read it.”
“There’s no time.” Priya’s hand closed around her arm. “Richard wants to see you. Now.”
The walk to Richard’s corner office felt like a death march.
Livvie passed cubicles and desks, felt eyes on her back, heard the whispers she wasn’t supposed to hear. The Pemberton logo gleamed on the wall—silver letters on black marble, the monument to a career she’d poured six years of her life into.
Six years of early mornings and late nights.
Six years of manuscripts read on subway commutes and weekends spent nurturing authors who would eventually be assigned to senior agents.
Six years of ideas pitched and dismissed, credit given elsewhere, her name never quite making it onto the things she’d helped create.
She knocked on his door.
“Come in.”
Richard Ames sat behind his mahogany desk like a king on a throne.
Silver hair perfectly styled. Charcoal suit that probably cost more than her monthly rent.
The wall behind him was a shrine to his success—awards, framed covers, photos of him with famous authors, all arranged to intimidate anyone who sat in the deliberately uncomfortable chair across from him.
“Olivia.” He didn’t stand. “Close the door.”
She did.
“Have a seat.”
She didn’t. Something in her—some new instinct she hadn’t possessed two weeks ago—told her to stay standing. To not give him the height advantage.
His eyebrow twitched. Displeasure, quickly masked.
“I’ll get right to the point.” He leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers. “It’s come to my attention that you’ve been developing an author outside of agency channels. A young writer named Nora Whitcomb.”
Livvie’s heart stuttered. Nora? The manuscript she’d rescued from the reject pile. The notes she’d given, the encouragement, the promise to look at revisions.
“I didn’t develop her,” Livvie said carefully. “I gave her feedback. She was rejected, and I thought—”
“You thought you’d go around me.” Richard’s voice went sharp. “You thought you’d cultivate your own stable of authors, use Pemberton resources to build your personal client list, and then—what? Jump ship? Start your own agency with our talent?”
“That’s not what happened.”
“Isn’t it?” He picked up a printed email—Livvie recognized her own words, her notes to Nora, somehow obtained. “You told her to revise and resubmit. To you. Not to the agency. To you personally.”
“Because you rejected her! Because no one else would give her a chance, and I thought—”
“You thought wrong.” Richard stood now, slowly, unfolding to his full height. He was tall—she’d forgotten how tall—and he used every inch of it as a weapon. “Do you know who Nora Whitcomb is?”
Livvie shook her head.
“Senator Whitcomb’s daughter. The manuscript you ‘rescued’ is about to be the subject of a bidding war. Every agency in the city wants her—and you tried to steal her for yourself.”
“I didn’t know who she was! I was trying to help a young writer who deserved a chance—”
“The intent is irrelevant.” Richard’s voice was final. Cold. “You went around me. You developed a project without authorization. You used company resources for personal gain.” He paused, letting each accusation land. “Your position at Pemberton & Associates is terminated. Effective immediately.”
The words hung in the air.
You’re fired.
Livvie waited for the devastation to hit. The panic. The desperate urge to apologize, to explain, to beg for another chance.
It didn’t come.
Instead, something else rose in its place. Something quiet and fierce and tired of being invisible.
You’ve spent your whole life trying to be useful, Aunt Lila had said. Trying to earn your place. But what if you just…let someone love you for who you are? Without fixing anything.
She couldn’t fix this. Richard had made up his mind long before she’d walked through that door.
The Nora Whitcomb situation was an excuse—a convenient weapon to eliminate someone who’d embarrassed him, who’d challenged him, who’d dared to speak up in a meeting and suggest she might know something he didn’t.
She couldn’t save her job.
But she could say the truth.
Livvie squared her shoulders. Lifted her chin. Looked Richard Ames directly in the eye. “Before I go,” she said, “I want to say something.”
His expression flickered—surprise, annoyance, the beginning of a dismissal. “This isn’t a negotiation—”
“I’m not negotiating. I’m documenting the record.”
She took a breath. Steadied herself. And began.
“The Hartley debut. I found that manuscript in the slush pile two years ago. I wrote the reader report, I championed it through three rounds of rejection, I’m the reason it got a second look. Derek got the acquisition credit. It sold 200,000 copies.”
Richard’s mouth opened. She didn’t let him speak.
“The Morrison literary fiction. I developed that author for six months—calls every week, three rounds of editorial notes, hand-holding through two complete rewrites. The week before the deal closed, you reassigned her to a senior agent. Someone else got the commission. I got a form email thanking me for my ‘support.’”
The room was very quiet.
Livvie became aware that the door wasn’t fully closed. That people in the hallway could probably hear. She didn’t care.
“The Winters thriller series. I’m the one who suggested the rebranding. The Patterson acquisition. I identified that author at a conference when no one else was paying attention. The entire YA romance initiative—”
“That’s enough.” Richard’s voice was strangled. His face had gone an interesting shade of red.
“You’re right.” Livvie nodded. “It’s more than enough.
Six years of enough. Six years of being invisible.
Six years of watching other people take credit for my work, my ideas, my instincts.
” She paused. Let the silence stretch. “I’m not asking for sympathy.
I’m not asking for anything. I’m just documenting the record.
Because someone should know what invisible people accomplish. ”
Richard stared at her. His mouth worked, but nothing came out. For once in his life, he seemed to have no cutting response, no power play, no way to diminish her.
Livvie turned toward the door.
“Oh, and Richard?” She paused, hand on the frame. “Nora Whitcomb chose to work with me because I was kind to her when no one else was. That’s not theft. That’s just what happens when you treat people like they matter.”
She walked out.
The bullpen was silent.